Locus Roundtable2015-03-22T17:40:22Zhttp://www.locusmag.com/Roundtable/feed/atom/WordPressAlvaro Zinos-Amarohttp://www.locusmag.com/Roundtable/?p=23232015-03-22T17:40:22Z2015-03-21T15:53:40ZI recently launched a Kickstarter for a one-of-a-kind history-making anthology, Speculations KC for the 2016 Worldcon, a return to Kansas City after 40 years. One of the joys of moving here has been discovering the rich connections to genre history and fandom that the area has. The Midwest may sometimes not be the first place to come to mind when you think about genre, so I thought it might be good to remind people why the Kansas City region is so important in genre history and fandom and why it’s a great place to visit. So here are a few thoughts:

1) Star Writers—From Robert Heinlein to William F. Nolan, Larry Niven, and James Gunn, the Kansas City area has been home to a lot of big name writing stars of genre fiction. Two of these are SFWA grandmasters, Niven will become one this May, and Nolan will become one at the World Horror Convention later this year. Lesser known talents include Frank K. Kelly, who was an early pulp writer in his teens and twenties and sold every story he wrote to the pulps, then went on to write speeches for Harry S. Truman. He also happens to be Nolan’s cousin. Tom Reamy was an openly gay writer whose 1970s stories included daring-for-the-day homoerotic themes and characters. And Pat Cadigan and Kij Johnson are two of the most respected female writers working today and have both won numerous awards.

2) Fandom History—The Kansas City Science Fiction and Fantasy Society has been around since the early 1970s, and has hosted ConQuesT, the local fan-run science fiction and fantasy convention, every Memorial Day Weekend, 46 times as of this year. From members of this group also came the original MidAmeriCon, “Big MAC,” in 1976, which put Kansas City on the map of fandom and paved the way for today’s thriving local groups and events. Naka-Kon, the area’s main anime convention, is in its twelfth year, and continues to receive rave reviews from fans and professionals alike. KC is also home to not one, but two large comic/media conventions that have been receiving amazing local press as of late. Spectrum Fantastic Art Live acts to bring together artists, industry professionals, and fans of the science fiction and fantasy art community from all across the globe.

3) Genre History—MidAmeriCon, the first Worldcon here, started the Hugo awards Academy Awards-style ceremony, was the debut of Star Warsprops and pics to science fiction fans with guest appearances by Mark Hamill and Gary Kurtz, had the first official film festival at a Worldcon, and hosted the first Hugo Losers Party, founded by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois. It also was the first videotaped Worldcon. Conquest 46 will be the first time George R.R. Martin is Editor Guest of Honor, and many other worthwhile guests have received early recognition here.

4) Academic Study—The University of Kansas hosts the unparalleled Gunn Center For the Study of Science Fiction, named after its award-winning founder, a legend in the field, and currently run by Chris McKitterick and Kij Johnson, active writers in their own right. From offering numerous classes, guest lectures by David Brin, Gary Wolfe and others, to handing out distinguished awards like the annual John Campbell and Theodore Sturgeon Awards, to running professional-quality workshops every summer for novel and short fiction writers, important academic work for our field is being done here. And I’m not even mentioning the invaluable collection of pulps and papers held in nearby libraries.

5) Location–You can’t get a much more centralized locale in the United States than Kansas City. By air, you can arrive in 1 ½ hours from Dallas or Chicago, 2 ½ hours from DC, 3 hours from New York, 3 ½ hours from Los Angeles, 4 ½ hours from Montreal, 11 hours from London, 13 ½ hours from Finland, and 15 hours from Japan. MCI international airport is just a quick 20 minute drive to downtown. If train is your preferred mode of transportation, Amtrak is located at the historic Union Station, a mere 1.5 miles from the KC Convention Center. And for those that love a good road trip, you won’t necessarily have to travel far to reach Kansas City…. it’s an 8 hour drive from Chicago, Denver, Dallas, and Nashville just to name a few.

6) Arts Mecca—With Hallmark Cards based here and Spectrum Fantastic and more, Kansas City has a strong reputation for the arts. That includes comic book companies like Andrews McMeel which have published The Far Side, Fox Trot, and other famous cartoons, and many other wonderful events from symphonies to theaters to opera and more. The arts community thrives and receives a warm welcome and great appreciation here.

7) Family Friendly—Not only will there be educational and fun children’s programming at MidAmeriCon II, as well as onsite childcare, but Kansas City also offers plenty of family-friendly attractions throughout the metro for kids of all ages. Kaleidoscope art studio in Crown Center, free to the public and operated by Hallmark, offers the creative opportunity for children and their parents to produce masterpieces with leftover bits from the Hallmark studios. For a more technical adventure, visit Science City at Union Station where numerous interactive learning stations allow children to play and learn hands-on while encouraging interest in science, technology, engineering and math-related fields. Other popular family outings include Legoland Discovery Center, SeaLife Aquarium, The Kansas City Zoo, and Deanna Rose Children’s Farmstead—all within easy reach of downtown and the conventions.

8) The Blues—Kansas City’s Blues scene is legendary and some of the most famous musicians and songwriters got their start here. Kansas City now hosts the American Jazz Museum and it still has a great live music scene on both the Country Club Plaza, the first outdoor mall of its kind in the country, as well as in local bars, clubs and more.

9) Museums–Whether your interest is art, history, music, toys, sports… Kansas City has a museum for you. By far, the most popular of these is the National WWI Museum at Liberty Memorial, which houses one of the largest collection of WWI artifacts anywhere in the world. For a bit more regional content, I already mentioned the American Jazz Museum, so let’s add the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, Steamboat Arabia Museum (a don’t miss for you steampunk fans), and the Truman Presidential Museum & Library—all of which offer a wealth of exhibits which showcase some of Kansas City’s past. A few other popular attractions are the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Airline History Museum, and the National Museum of Toys and Miniatures.

10) Dining–In 2014, Travel and Leisure dubbed Kansas City the nation’s third best city for foodies, as well as number one for the most affordable dining. From fine dining and fusion foods to cultural food trucks popping up all across the metro, the dining scene is continually growing and enticing new chefs to relocate to Kansas City, bringing their unique flavors and concepts to the area. To help Worldcon attendees in 2016 make the delicious decisions of where to dine while in KC, MidAmeriCon II will be offering a taste-tested dining guide of Kansas City’s eateries. And did I mention the BBQ?!?Kansas City is home to a plethora of world-renowned BBQ joints. Everyone in town has their opinion on which establishment is actually the best–Gates, Arthur Bryant’s, Woodyard, Jackstack? But between the locals there’s one BBQ opinion that’s not in dispute: KC Style is the king of BBQ!

So there are some great reasons why Kansas City is a great part of fandom and genre history. Hope to see you all at MidAmeriCon II in Summer 2016, and please check out Speculations KC, which will pay tribute to many of these contributions and more and be a great keepsake for fans and collectors!

Bryan Thomas Schmidt is a critically praised, award nominated editor and author of anthologies, novels and short fiction. His debut novel, The Worker Prince, received Honorable Mention on Barnes and Noble’s Year’s Best Science Fiction Releases of 2011. His anthologies include Shattered Shields with Jennifer Brozek, Mission: Tomorrow, Galactic Games, and Monster Hunter Tales with Larry Correia, all from Baen as well as others for EDGE, Fairwood Press and more. He hosts Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s Chat under the hashtag #sffwrtcht regularly on twitter, interviewing top guests from around the field, and is a Junior Acquistions and Developmental editor for Wordfire Press.

]]>1Alvaro Zinos-Amarohttp://www.locusmag.com/Roundtable/?p=23202015-03-12T20:49:20Z2015-03-12T20:49:20ZTruth: I’ve been sitting for two hours in front of this blank page, unsure where to start or what to write about. There may have been a few side trips to Facebook and Twitter during that time, but I was wracking my brain trying to come up with a subject as opposed to just talking about my short fiction collection.

Non-fiction doesn’t come easy to me, and every topic I thought of discussing (likeable versus unlikeable characters, the resurgence of the horror genre, the difference in reviews of work written by women as opposed to that by men) has already been discussed and by those far more learned than me, so I’ll write about what I know, which is trauma.

It’s okay if that made you roll your eyes; I’ll confess to rolling my eyes as I typed it. I know people love to slow down when they drive past the scene of a wreck, but don’t worry, I’m not going to peel back my layers and reveal an inner victim here. I’m referring to trauma in fictional characters, trauma as it relates to horror and dark fantasy.

Take scars, for instance. Some are fascinating, others horrific; some draw the eye, others repel it. Regardless of our initial, visceral reaction, every scar has a story. Every scar is a story.

I had major surgery when I was three and have a fairly large scar on my neck as a result. As far as scars go, it’s an interesting one and resembles a burn more than something surgery would leave behind, but my memories are far more interesting: the smell of the hospital, the feel of the hospital crib with its metal bars, the sense of being so very small beneath the bright white lights, the rasp of my fingers against the bandage nurses put on my stuffed rabbit to match mine. As for the story: I was born with a large hemangioma (a benign tumor) on my neck that continued to grow, and the removal required something like two hundred stitches. I found out later that my surgeon went into reconstructive plastic surgery because of it.

Fast forward to me in my teenage years, when I accidentally put my arm through a window. I’ve quite a few scars from that, too. My memories consist of the bit of skin I left behind on the glass, the blood draining from my friend’s face when she saw the wounds, the snow outside, the doctor’s eyes as he stitched me back together. And the story? It involves me taking out the trash and coming back in, my friend and I started goofing about with opening and closing the kitchen door. It was cold, I was in my school uniform, and it was funny until I moved my arm forward when I should’ve moved it back.

Both of those memories, those stories, are as clear now as they were five, ten, even fifteen years ago.

But the scars that don’t show on people usually have the strongest stories, even if they’re the stories people won’t or can’t tell. No scabs to peel, no stitches to break, but the wounds run even deeper than the physical. This is the horror I’m drawn to.

Life does its best to break us in ways small and large, and many of my stories, regardless of how fantastical they seem, have their roots in the real. “Sing Me Your Scars,” the title story of my collection, owes its birth, in part, to my frustration with the endless onslaught of memes about what real women look like. Although they’re completely different stories, both “Melancholia in Bloom” and “Glass Boxes and Clockwork Gods” share the common thread of loss of memory and loss of self. I lost my grandmother to Alzheimer’s, and another family member is in the middle stages of the disease right now. I can’t help but use it in my fiction as a way to help make sense of things, to help cope.

But the trauma that seeds my work is not always my own, and the real horror in the world is that it’s everywhere you look. The world sings it scars every day. I could never read the news again and still have enough story seeds to grow a lifetime’s worth of stories. This is what makes my heart hurt. This is why I write of such things.

In spite of what I write, I’m an optimist. The world might be ugly and people might be cruel, but there is beauty and kindness and hope, too. Sometimes it’s hard to find, but it’s there. My stories may not always come with happy endings, and when they do, the characters are usually left with more than their fair share of wounds, but damaged and scarred, I’d like to think they keep moving forward out of the shadows in search of that light.

About the Author

Damien Angelica Walters’ short fiction has appeared in various magazines and anthologies, including Year’s Best Weird Fiction Volume One,Apex, Nightmare, Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, Shimmer,andothers. “The Floating Girls: A Documentary,” originally published in Jamais Vu and reprinted in the Chinese literary journal ZUI Found, has been nominated for a 2014 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Short Fiction.

]]>0Alvaro Zinos-Amarohttp://www.locusmag.com/Roundtable/?p=22972015-02-19T00:45:18Z2015-02-10T23:41:55ZI was not a fan of The Book of Life. I will not elaborate too much on this point except to mention that when I watched it I recalled a bit from an article by Sophia McDougall published in The New Statesman:

I remember watching Shrek with my mother.

“The Princess knew kung-fu! That was nice,” I said. And yet I had a vague sense of unease, a sense that I was saying it because it was what I was supposed to say.

She rolled her eyes. “All the princesses know kung-fu now.”

I thought the same thing about the heroine of The Book of Life. She knows kung-fu and she spews the kind of “feisty” attitude we must associate with heroines and she is therefore strong and everything is kosher.

In an effort to get a wider variety of women in movies and books, we have often heard the mantra that we need more strong female characters. However, as some commentators have noted (http://www.overthinkingit.com/2008/08/18/why-strong-female-characters-are-bad-for-women/) “strong” has often become a code word for a very specific kind of character. The kind that must demonstrate her chops via feats of physical strength. So, for example, in Pirates of the Caribbean 2 the heroine Elizabeth Swann has now acquired fencing skills. This serves as a credential for her “strength” even though the character had demonstrated “strength” of another type already in the first movie: she was smart, even devious, managing to wriggle her way out of more than one situation.

All of the above data suggest to me that we (or at least the critics at EW) like a wide variety of male character types but prefer our women to be two-dimensionally “badass” and/or evil.

That means that badasses like Sarah Connor and villains like Catherine Trammell could be palatable to audiences. Male characters, however, were allowed to come in a wider range and still deemed likeable. Men, Mlwaski, writes, could be “passive” characters. Women? They could blow stuff up or kill people.

One could argue that “strong” refers to a well-rounded character. However, in the words of McDougall:

Chuck Wendig argues here that we shouldn’t understand “strong” as meaning, well, “strong,” but rather as something like “well-written”…. But I simply don’t think it’s true that the majority of writers or readers are reading the term that way…. And even if this less limiting understanding of “strong female character” were the common reading, doesn’t it then become even sadder and even more incomprehensible that where the characterisation of half the world’s population is concerned, writing well is treated as a kind of impressive but unnecessary optional extra?

Since I have small children, I watch a bunch of animated movies every year and aside from The Book of Life I watched The Lego Movie. This had a character who can build all kinds of cool brick structures and can “kick ass.” How To Train Your Dragon also has a “strong” girlfriend for the hero. Yet it all felt like a MacDonalds burger: it looks like meat but I’m sure it ain’t meat.

In fact, a couple of weeks ago I watched the 1980s adaptation of Flash Gordon and was mildly delighted to see that Dale Arden was “strong” too! Despite the cheesiness and bubbly sexism Dale kicked ass! She was for the duration of the film most interested in exclaiming FLASH! but at one point she took off her heels and beat about half a dozen guards. Strong woman, indeed.

And that, I guess, is my point. We really haven’t gotten that far from Dale and her display of 1980s strength. What’s more, every few months I am distressed when I hear a call for more strong women like the ones we used to have in the 80s. Ripley and Sarah Connor, a breed that has apparently gone extinct. Only it didn’t go extinct. Alice has fought the Umbrella corporation for years and Selene is still battling vampires and werewolves in Underworld, and a few years ago we got Trinity from The Matrix and surely the new Star Wars films will bring us some feisty new lass who can shoot a laser gun. Hey, even turds like Van Helsing knew that you require one (and only one) “strong” woman in the film.

My debut novel Signal to Noise is coming out and I’ve been obsessively reading the reviews. The main character, Meche–who in 1980s Mexico City discovers how to cast magic spells using vinyl records–has been described as “awkward,” “angry and cruel at times but also powerful, active,” “angry and self-isolating” and “smart, caring and affectionate but, at the same time, bossy, possessive and manipulative.”

You have no idea how much this pleases me.

When I think about the desire for “strong” women in fiction I think about my great-grandmother who was an illiterate peasant and then a maid after the Mexican Revolution. Surely she wouldn’t fit the grade of “badassery,” but I think that there is a certain kind of endurance in being on your knees for years, cleaning floors, in order to support your illegitimate daughter. There is duty and there is affection.

You might reply that this is not a good example as audiences rarely want to read about the tribulations of poor maids, but my point is not to demand a particular type of character but to remark that we should not yearn for “strong” women but for a wide variety of women. They need not all know how to fence or have studied kung fu.

About the Author

Mexican by birth, Canadian by inclination. Silvia’s debut novel is Signal to Noise, about music, magic and Mexico City. Her first collection, This Strange Way of Dying, was a finalist for The Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. Her stories have also been collected in Love & Other Poisons. She tweets @silviamg.

]]>5Alvaro Zinos-Amarohttp://www.locusmag.com/Roundtable/?p=22952015-02-05T16:44:33Z2015-02-05T16:44:33ZI often think of writing as a process of entering into a contract with your readers: when you persuade someone to read your work, you’re making promises to them that your work will deliver in certain ways. Certain genres, it seems to me, make specific contractual demands on a writer–for example, I doubt that Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light is going to end with Henry VIII abdicating and the Catholic Church being re-established. Science fiction does the same; franchise fiction–at least, the kind that I write–makes its own promises to the reader. By having to pay attention to certain “fixed” events established on-screen, the franchise fiction writer sometimes has to be as much a writer of historical fiction as science fiction.

I sometimes describe my Star Trek: Deep Space Nine novel The Never-Ending Sacrifice as a historical novel that happens to be set on an alien planet. This novel is set on Cardassia Prime across a period of several years (roughly the same time period covered by the TV show) but from the perspective of the antagonists, the Cardassians, who are responsible for the war that comprises the main storyline of the later seasons of DS9. As such, I was bound to keep to events that had been established on-screen–the capture of DS9, the entry of the Romulans into the war, the fall of Cardassia Prime–indeed, that was the point of the story! My methodology writing the book was much as I imagine a historical novelist’s must be: establishing dates, compiling lists of significant figures such as political leaders (and their dates in office). Events in my book grew out of these limits: What must have happened between event A and event B? What could have happened, given those two events? I found this a very fertile mode of storytelling. Nothing in the book contradicts what is seen on screen (at least, I hope not!), but the story–and most of the characters–were completely new, patching together what was glimpsed on-screen into what I hope was a satisfactory whole. The pleasure of reading–the contract that I offered the reader–was to enjoy the retelling of a familiar story through an entirely fresh perspective.

Other books that I’ve written in Pocket’s Star Trek range have allowed me to expand this future history of the Cardassian Union, and have drawn on texts from the Star Trek expanded universe, aiming for consistency while establishing space for my own stories. The Crimson Shadow, which is set after the end of DS9, and during a period of stabilization on Cardassia, draws upon the world-building done by actor Andrew J. Robinson (Garak) in his novel A Stitch in Time. It was an interesting challenge to remain true to three separate creative visions: the original series, Robinson’s, and my own vision of Cardassian society and culture.

The Star Trek book range is currently a fairly complex universe, with many overlapping stories. (The Crimson Shadow was part of a five-book series, Star Trek: The Fall, written with four other authors: a thoroughly enjoyable project in its own right, working to satisfy all our various ideas for the series.) I think of the books as fulfilling a role similar to that fulfilled by the New Adventures when Doctor Who was off-air. They are the sole place where stories set in the Star Trek universe are being told (the J. J. Abrams films inhabit their own timeline). As such, the readership is dedicated, has bought into the continuing narrative, and is interested in seeing that narrative furthered.

*Spoiler Alert*

The space station Deep Space 9, for example, is now a completely new facility, crewed by an almost entirely new staff (there is crossover from Star Trek: The Next Generation too: the current commander is Ro Laren, and Beverly Crusher has been CMO on the station for a few books). Anyone new to the range picking up my current book, The Missing, expecting Sisko, Kira, Bashir, etc., might find themselves confused. They will find plenty of sniping between Odo and Quark, however. Some things remain the same.

I’m often asked whether writing franchise fiction constrains my writing in any way. I’ve found it’s much better to think of these boundaries as challenges rather than limitations. There’s as much fun to be had from writing a sonnet or a villanelle, in working with a tight form, as there is from writing free verse. Sometimes those limits are exactly what makes the writing process challenging and interesting.

About the Author

Una McCormack is a lecturer in creative writing at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, and a New York Times bestselling author. She has written six Star Trek novels for Simon and Schuster, including her most recent, The Missing, and two Doctor Who novels for BBC Books, The King’s Dragon and The Way through the Woods. Her audio dramas, based on Doctor Who and Blake’s 7, have been produced by Big Finish. She lives in Cambridge with her partner, Matthew, and their daughter, Verity.

]]>1Alvaro Zinos-Amarohttp://www.locusmag.com/Roundtable/?p=22752015-02-02T05:22:48Z2015-02-01T04:18:15ZNow that I have five completed anthologies under my belt, the number of questions I get–from friends and strangers alike–about various aspects of anthology editing has turned from an occasional drip to a steady trickle. And while I would love to presume it’s because I’m such an awesome anthologist, the truth is, there’s fairly little information on the web regarding this niche topic. I thought it might be a good idea to collect some basic suggestions in one handy blog post. (Also, I’m incredibly lazy, and pointing people to a link is easier than cut/pasting chunks of this between e-mails!)

So, here goes:

Develop a Unique Concept

The optimal place to start is to develop a theme that is narrow yet appealing to a sizable readership, which your professional or life experience can somehow contribute to.

There are three primary reasons for a reader to pick up an anthology:

1) It contains a story or stories by some of their favorite authors.

2) They’re interested in the concept of the anthology.

3) They trust the editor’s selections.

Unless you’re Gardner Dozois, Ellen Datlow, or anyone else who knows a lot more than I do about this subject (and therefore wouldn’t be reading this post), you probably won’t be able to capitalize on #3. And while we’ll cover headliners later, anthology concept is what you have the most control over.

There are plenty of space opera, zombie, steampunk, and Lovecraftian horror volumes edited by well-established anthologists. And while it’s possible to produce another quality entry into any of these sub-genres, you’re much better off exploring a narrow topic that will appeal to a large enough number of readers for the project to succeed.

My inaugural project as editor was Unidentified Funny Objects, an anthology of humorous science fiction and fantasy. I felt that there weren’t enough pro-paying venues that seek out humorous and lighthearted stories. I did some digging and discovered that no similar volumes exist or had existed in recent memory; most humor anthologies cover a specific theme (Deals with the Devil, Chicks in Chainmail, etc). As a reader, I would gladly buy an annual volume that collected wide-ranging humor stories. Happily, other readers agreed: I’m at work on the fourth annual volume. Similarly, Coffee: 14 Caffeinated Tales of the Fantastic tapped into a large, unexplored demographic; there haven’t been any coffee-themed speculative anthologies before. The book is easy to market as a present for anyone who enjoys both reading and coffee.

When Neil Clarke, award-winning editor of Clarkesworld magazine, decided to launch his first anthology, he found a subject that was near and dear to his heart. Literally. A year before he announced Upgraded, an anthology of short stories about cyborgs, he survived a heart attack and had a defibrillator installed, effectively making him a self-proclaimed cyborg. Clarke wrote:

As I began looking into the possibility of a cyborg anthology, I quickly noticed that the cyborgs most people think of are villains (Cybermen, Darth Vader, the Borg, etc.). My people make excellent villains, but that only represents the tip of the iceberg. The more I thought about it, the more certain I became that this was the anthology project I had been looking for… a cyborg-edited cyborg anthology. I don’t think that’s been done before. Besides, cyborgs are cool.

So, what unique idea do you have, and how can your life experience contribute to the project? An architect might collect tales of fantastic cities and structures. A real estate agent could gather urban fantasy and ghost stories involving houses for sale. (Plus, they’d be able to market these books to other architects and real estate agents, in addition to SF/F fans.)

Have a Plan, Have a Budget

What’s your strategy for producing an anthology? While it’s possible for a first-time anthologist to sell their project to an established publisher, this is perhaps even more difficult than selling a first novel.

Your agent could contact publishers and pitch them your idea. You will need a brief write-up of the concept and a list of headliners who are tentatively willing to contribute stories. The more appealing your headliners, the more likely you are to land a deal. There are a number of (mostly much smaller) publishers whom you can approach without an agent. Even so, it’s a long shot unless you have some sort of a pre-existing relationship or a resumé.

If a publisher accepts your proposal, they’ll pay you an advance against royalties (usually upon delivery of the manuscript) which you can use to pay your authors and cover some of your time and effort. The amount can vary greatly and is extremely unlikely to exceed $10,000.

Crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter are perhaps the best solution for such fledgling niche projects. Not only can you raise some or all of the funds needed to produce the book, but the level of interest during your funding period will be a good indicator of how well the book might sell upon release.

In recent years I’ve seen more and more “hybrid” projects, where an anthology would raise its initial funds on Kickstarter, then become picked up by a publisher who would handle subsequent sales and print distribution. For example, Bryan Thomas-Schmidt’s space exploration anthology Beyond the Sun was crowd-funded, then published by Fairwood Press.

Whatever your strategy, please be sure you are able to fairly reimburse your writers, cover artist, and everyone else involved in the project. Your contributors should be paid at least $0.05-0.06 per word, perhaps more for your headliners (some won’t write for that little). If you plan on including reprints, you can pay $0.01-0.02 per word for those. Always provide at least one contributor copy to each author.

“I can’t afford to pay much” is not only a common excuse I hear from token-market publishers, but also a terrible business strategy. Most of the accomplished authors will not submit their work to penny-pinching projects. In the end, you will have a much weaker pool of stories to select from, and the project will be far less likely to get noticed by readers and critics alike.

Headliners

As I mentioned above, headliners are the top reason a reader might buy your anthology. Established authors will each have sizable fan bases who will gladly cough up a few bucks for their story alone; they might discover new authors as a bonus, which is an excellent reason to combine works from well-known authors and talented new writers alike.

Once you’ve established your anthology’s concept, think of popular authors who are especially good at writing the sort of stories you seek. Reach out to them directly. Send a polite query, including your pay rate, desired word count, and deadline.

If you plan to crowd-fund your project, be sure to mention that. Don’t ask them to begin working on the story until you’re certain you can afford to pay for it, but it’s okay to ask for tentative commitments. The same applies to anthologies you are shopping to publishers: so long as you don’t ask the author to begin the work, soliciting tentative interest so you can present your list of authors who are “on board” to the publisher is fine.

Keep in mind that popular authors are incredibly busy. Many won’t be able to commit to the project. Some will never respond to your e-mail. That’s okay–there are lots of great authors to approach, and some of them will say yes. If you’re having a hard time coming up with potential headliners for your project, you may not be quite well-read enough yet to edit an anthology.

Your e-mail should be brief, personal, and professional. Here’s a sample:

Dear Mr. Melville,

I’m in the process of putting together an anthology of short stories about whales. I greatly enjoyed Moby Dick and was hoping you might consider writing a short story for this project.

I’m seeking original stories of 2000-6000 words for Whales, Whales, Whales, and am able to offer $0.10/word for First Print and Electronic English language rights exclusive for 6 months after publication and non-exclusive rights afterward. Each contributor will also receive two paperback copies of the book and a lifetime supply of whale oil.

The submission deadline is December 31, 2015 and the publication date is August 1, 2016.

Thank you very much in advance for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Hopeful Editor

Other Contributors

Once you have a few solid headliners lined up, it’s time to fill out the rest of the book. There are two ways to go about this: you can open to submissions from the general public, or you can invite a bunch of authors directly. There are advantages and disadvantages to each approach.

Opening to submissions will likely allow you to find gems by little-known authors. Who knows, you could be the editor who discovers the next Octavia Butler or Robert Heinlein. Nothing about this process is more satisfying than nurturing and promoting brilliant new authors. However, this approach is extremely time-consuming. By posting the submission call on sites like The Grinder, Ralan, and Duotrope, you’ll likely receive hundreds of submissions. By the time you’re finished, you might sink enough hours into the project to earn less than minimum wage, but your anthology will be stronger for it.

The second approach is to identify and invite a number of authors whose work you’ve enjoyed to contribute directly. (Shameless Hint: I very much like getting invited to projects). These would mostly be neo-pros, not established best-selling authors.

The trick here is to catch people who are on their way up. Two years ago, any decent anthology could’ve gotten a story out of Ken Liu, who is one of the most brilliant short story authors writing today. By now, he’s too busy with bigger projects and has to turn down most anthology invitations. Be sure to approach authors whose work you already know and enjoy: they’re much more likely to write stories you’ll want to accept.

Cast your net wide: it’s important to solicit stories from a diverse group of authors. Let your potential contributors know that you welcome material from authors of all backgrounds, and actively seek out promising authors from traditionally disadvantaged groups. There is a ton of talent there, but even if you do an open submissions call, don’t just assume that you will get enough diverse submissions; be proactive about encouraging them. Also, I’m partial to encouraging the submission of translated stories, so English-speaking readers may be exposed to works from other countries and cultures.

Finally, it’s important to note that an invitation to submit is not a guarantee of acceptance. In fact, closed anthologies will generally invite more authors than they have room for, so that the editor can select and buy only the best of the available stories.

Selecting & Editing the Stories

If you do your job right, you will end up with more great stories than you can use. This is a good thing. An anthology isn’t just a random collection of tales united by theme: it is a work of art. The interplay of voices, styles, and plots should fit together like a symphony performed by an orchestra with you as the conductor.

To this end, most editors will whittle the submissions down slowly and only send out acceptances at the end of the process. They’re looking for material that isn’t just good, but fits well with the rest of the accepted stories.

Once the stories are in, don’t just spell-check them and throw the ones you like into the book. A good editor will work with an author to polish their story like a gemstone. In many ways, this process is similar to beta-reading and critiquing stories for fellow authors, except your opinion has more weight and you must be more careful to help rather than hinder the story. In addition to selecting the best stories, this is where your own skill and talent will matter most to the quality of the project.

Finally, there’s the devilishly difficult task of assembling the table of contents (TOC). There are many schools of thought on the subject. Some editors subscribe to “open strong, close long”–they place their one or two strongest stories at the beginning and close with a longer piece. Others prefer to mix up lengths and close on a light note, with their one humorous story at the end of the book.

This process is more art than science and no two editors will build the TOC in exactly the same way. Ultimately, it will come down to the interplay between stories, as described above.

I recently had the pleasure of designing the TOC for my own short story collection, Explaining Cthulhu to Grandma and Other Stories. This is generally a bad idea, because authors are famously poor at judging the quality of their own work. Fortunately, most of the stories in this collection are reprints from pro venues, which means they were vetted by other editors. For this TOC, I took a rollercoaster approach: hopping from humorous to dark, from space opera to urban fantasy, in an effort to emphasize fun and enhance the sense of wonder for the reader. Did I succeed? Can you deduce my reasons for story placement? In a shameless act of self-promotion, I invite you to pick up a copy and find out.

About the Author

Alex Shvartsman is a writer, translator and game designer from Brooklyn, NY. Over 70 of his short stories have appeared in InterGalactic Medicine Show, Nature, Galaxy’s Edge, Daily Science Fiction, and many other magazines and anthologies. He won the 2014 WSFA Small Press Award for Short Fiction. He is the editor of the Unidentified Funny Objects annual anthology series of humorous SF/F. His collection Explaining Cthulhu to Grandma and Other Stories was released on February 1, 2015. His website is www.alexshvartsman.com

In December 2014 I approached our esteemed panelists with the following:

On his blog Michael Swanwick recently addressed a reader-inspired question: “How do I cope with the despair endemic upon being an unpublished or little-published writer?” In an essay first published in 1991, Robert Silverberg wrote about spending his adult life as a successful professional writer but still facing the “long despair of nothing well.” The word “despair,” and related terms, like “defeat” and “depression,” appear with some frequency in discussions of writing.

My question for this group is: if this is something you experience, how do *you* cope with despair as it relates to your professional SF/F/H endeavors (writing, reviewing, editing, scholarship, etc.)?

Are your coping methods now the same or different as when you were unpublished/little-published/trying to break in?

Cat Rambo

Strangely enough, when I am feeling particularly angsty, I mail Michael Swanwick, who was one of my Clarion West instructors. I mail him a long tortured letter and then he mails back and tells me to go write.

Paul Graham Raven

The most honest answer in my case is probably “scuttle sideways into a world where there’s marginally better odds of landing a regular paycheck given your skillset”–with the rueful caveat that I’m fully aware that the academy isn’t exactly a stable employment market for the majority of its participating Rational Actors, but also that I’m too old to pass the eye-candy selection standards at Starbucks.

More true to the spirit of the question: deadlines are the great and final motivator. A promise to deliver must be fulfilled, and commissions–regular or irregular, paid or otherwise–bring a certain productive rhythm to one’s writing life, and also provide a justification for sustaining it, if that doesn’t sound too pompous. (It totally does, but whatevs.) So I guess volunteering for things is a good motivator, as is reading new stuff by writers who inspire you, and stuff by writers you think are idiots. Whatever warms the engine-block, right?

But getting yourself into writing the stuff you’re always promising yourself you’ll write, those odd-ball back-burner secret pet projects that you’ve poked at for half a decade or so, but never have time to work on properly because you have to pay the rent and writing? Damned if I know–if anyone’s got tips, I plan to copy them down!

Jeffrey Ford

Honestly, I never felt despair when I was unpublished. Writing was too much fun. It was a lot of the other shit in life that at times caused despair, but even then, not much. It took me ten years of writing without much acknowledgement before things took off. I wouldn’t trade that time for the world. Also, I was young and basically didn’t give a fuck. I’d decided I was gonna write come hell or high water. When you have kids, though, things get deep pretty quickly. Then I had a full time job where I taught five classes a semester and drove an hour and a half each way to work and back. Writing time was precious, but I used the drive to think up story ideas and my students, to a great extent, taught me a lot about writing. Writing has never made me feel despair. Sometimes frustration. But often elation and accomplishment as well. Only bad things happening to the people I love can really get me down. In these situations, writing has saved me more times than not.

Cecelia Holland

Despair is part of my process. I don’t get into the meat of the story until I’ve destroyed all I already know about it and am reduced to sitting, staring out a window, and eating chocolate chip cookies. Then, against my will, drop by drop like acid falling on the heart, through the awful grace of god, comes wisdom.

Michael Dirda

Being a journalist, I don’t have time for angst over my writing. The work gets done, willy-nilly, because there are other people counting on it. I save my personal despair–of which there has been plenty over the years–for the times when Im not sitting at my desk. As D.H. Lawrence said, “Work is the best, and a certain numbness, a merciful numbness.” Most of the time, I just tell myself to get on with it. Of course, I regularly look at my initial drafts, and sometimes my final drafts, and wonder “What made you ever think you could write?”

Elizabeth Hand

I experience despair over writing more often than not. I try to focus on the process, not the outcome, and on technique. One sentence at a time, one page, etc. This feels more like physical labor to me, which is a good antidote to despair.

I also heed Merlin’s advice to the young Wart in The Once and Future King:

“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then–to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the thing for you.”

Siobhan Carroll

What a great question! I’ll reinforce what everyone else has said so far:
#1. The best cure for despair over writing is always to write.

That said, *why* do writers despair?

I’d say I see (and have experienced) far more despair in academia than I see in SF writing groups. There’s a good reason for that: in a ‘publish or perish’ world, one often can’t afford 10,000 hours of practice. That article needs to get published this year, or you’re not only out of a job, but probably out of a career. The stakes are very high, and so even small frustrations can induce despair.

Full-time SF writers face similar stakes. That book needs to be sold or you can’t keep up with your mortgage. A fallow period in which you can’t seem to sell anything may well bring visions of the end of your writing career dancing through your head. Again, despair is real, and the only solution is to keep writing.

So now back to the unpublished writer. If writing despair is linked to a writer’s sense that everything is at stake in getting this novel/story sold – then part of managing despair involves managing stakes.

So a second piece of advice is:

#2. If possible, keep your stakes low.

a) Financial stakes: Avoid being the person who quits their job to become a “full-time writer” if you haven’t sold anything yet. Most writers spend years learning their craft while working day jobs before taking that plunge (if ever).

b) Emotional stakes: If you’re working a day job & feeling despair, it’s worth asking where the stakes are for you. Is it that you’ve always thought of yourself as a writer, and your lack of immediate success is challenging your sense of identity? Is it that you have friends and family members who make you feel foolish when you fail? Is it that you’ve represented yourself to others as a writer & a rejection slip makes you feel like a fraud?

These high-stakes *emotional* scenarios seem to me the most common (and one of the reasons so many people rush prematurely into self-publishing). But in these cases the stakes can–and should–be managed outside of just writing: Limit your exposure to toxic people. Identify traits in yourself that you value that do not depend on external measures of success. Manage the expectations of yourself & others. Etc.

Easier said than done, of course. But to sum up: To manage despair: 1) keep writing, 2) manage your stakes.

Happy (almost) holidays everyone.

Brett Cox

I’ve always identified with a quote attributed to William Gibson: that the hardest thing in writing is to get past one’s loathing for one’s own work. For me, writing–or at least generating that first draft–has never been a pleasant process. I don’t enjoy it. But it’s what I’ve always wanted to do, and it’s where my abilities lie, so here I am. And the results are worth it.

What results would those be? Publication, an audience, the respect of my peers. Someone I’ve never met before telling me they liked one of my stories. And, let’s not forget, the satisfaction of producing a viable creative work, and the feeling that I did a good job no matter what the outside response. That sort of thing.

Having been a slow starter, and still subject to long droughts, I understand the despair that comes with lack of publication, or lack of recognition when you do. What can we do? What Siobhan said, of course: keep writing, and manage your stakes.

Kathleen Goonan

Writing is a virus some of us get, and the only cure is to write. I contracted it when very young, as most of us do, and staved it off with my preschool until I was thirty-two, when that simmering background radiation suddenly flared and took over my life. I wrote my first novel during scraps of time–before dawn, during lunch time and weekends, and watched it take form as science fantasy (unpublishable in 1985, but now?…)–and then stepped onto the tightrope, leaving the income, community, my school building–everything I had built from utter scratch–to balance over the terrible abyss of Nothing, and write. In terror and doggedness and joy, I wrote. And was published–in Appalachian Heritage, Read Magazine, and almost, in Redbook–but those were mere nothings to me, too easy. Not science fiction. But soon, I was encouraged by acceptances at Space and Time, The Mage, other small magazines the names of which I cannot recall, and then, Strange Plasma, and Century…so it went. The acceptance of Queen City Jazz in 1992 was a burst of wild joy and searing light.

I was invited to teach at Georgia Tech in 2010, right after I finished This Shared Dream, and accepted the job out of curiosity and with a sense that it was temporary and would fill the necessary dusting-off, desk-clearing, gradual return to the world and the incubus of a new project that always takes me quite a while after finishing a novel, which I usually fill by writing short stories. After a month, I told my hiring committee that if I taught two semesters a year, I would never write again, so we made a deal for me to teach only fall semester.

I have written, still. I have responded to every story request and to every academic request. I’ve published stories in Twelve Tomorrows, Arc, Discover Magazine, Tor.com, the Hieroglyph Project, Reach for Infinity, and in venues I can’t remember right now–more than enough words for another novel and a half. I’ve written a post-human thought-piece for Intelligence Unbound, many reviews, academic pieces, and a concluding chapter for Lisa Yaszek’s forthcoming Women in Early SF academic book. I’ve written in the interstices of planning courses, grading, and in my head during my relaxing weekly ten-hour commute.

But now, there is a hungry, novel-shaped space in my heart, mind, and soul. Since 1983, I was always working on a novel–until 2010. Maybe I needed that time to reassess everything–what science fiction has been, what it can be, and my curious un-choice of writing sf as a career, which I did not make, but which seemed, somehow, like What I Ought To Do. But is it now? As I head into my next chunk of open time, already filled with distant signposts that appear as colors the eye can’t see, but which mysteriously shine, I am drawn forward chiefly by curiosity. I want to read the writing on those signposts, each a piece of fiction that has been assembling itself in the place where fiction is made.

I can’t say I ever felt generalized despair in being unpublished or little-published. For specific projects, sure–I might wonder if X would ever sell–but even when a hoped-for prospect fell through, I only crashed briefly. My response to such things tends to be to pick myself up off the floor and go WELL I’LL SHOW THEM. Find somebody new to submit to; write something new to submit. I like “fail better” a great deal as a mantra, because it reminds me to up my game.

As a more solidly-published writer, my despair is again not general, and it usually falls into one of two categories: 1) oh my god what is *wrong* with this industry how can anybody keep a career going, and 2) oh my god what is *wrong* with this book I have no idea where I’m going. The latter I tend to solve by slinging my unfinished draft at a friend and asking her to read it so I can babble at her about the mess in my head, because articulating things often helps me see a way through them. The former…I can’t really solve the problems with publishing, but I can and do tell myself that if I have to reinvent my career under a new name, I will. It’s basically the WELL I’LL SHOW THEM of this stage.

But I can’t say I’ve ever *really* despaired of my life choices as a writer. Even when I’m stuck on a book, I know that I’ve done this before and will do it again.

E. Lily Yu

As many others have felt and said, I’m not sure I know the despair specific to being unpublished or little-published, which sounds, to me, more like the very exciting state of being about-to-be-published. That said, I know a few flavors of despair very well: when the execution fails the vision, which is every time; when, through exhaustion or lack of time and capacity, I can’t write; and once a month, regular as the bills, when I realize that I am an awful writer who has never written a decent sentence in my life, who will never write a paragraph worthy of other people’s eyeballs, and who will justly never be published again because everyone else in the world is simultaneously realizing that I am an awful writer.

I have found the solution for the last kind of despair: a dearly loved one who listens with sympathy to the wailing and gnashing of teeth of about an hour, and then quietly and patiently asks me if I remember saying the exact same thing last month?

In the middle of the writing, though, there is no despair.

Russell Letson

I don’t write fiction and haven’t had to struggle all that much to publish academic essays and various flavors of journalism. (Which is not to say that the writing itself can’t be arduous. And like Paul GR, I find that deadlines are the drivers.) I have, however, hung out with writers (and editors) for most of my adult life and am married to a writer of fiction who does wrestle with the usual demons of production, publication, and validation. So I at least have observed the struggles. (And I have an unfinished book with a contract that’s become an obstreperous teenager, so I share some of those struggles, in a small way.)

It’s hard not to just echo Swanwick’s observation that you have to “tough it out”–though toughness and persistence, while necessary, are not sufficient. But since the theme here seems to be how to deal with the emotional challenges of working on the craft and one’s own ambitions, I can add one of my wife’s favorite bits of wisdom on the subject, often repeated in writing classes and workshops (copped from Samuel Beckett): “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” But then, that’s a more dramatic version of “tough it out,” so maybe I really don’t have much to offer beyond “Yeah, what he said.”

And even for a journalistic scribbler like me, having written is the sovereign remedy and balm of woe.

Guy Gavriel Kay

This discussion is complicated, it seems to me, by different meanings or contexts as to “despair.” If we think of it as “I can’t go on” without the “I’ll go on,” that follows it seems a large word for career frustration. I see those frustrations as being about the moving goalposts inherent in any artist’s career. Dream of writing something decent, dream of an agent, a publisher, some readers, a review in X, a good review in X, actual sales, more sales than Y…I talk to younger writers often about this, sometimes I steer them to a poem by Cavafy called “The First Step” (have a look).

On the other hand, if we use “despair” to describe the feeling every serious artist I know wrestles with, which is the gap between how something is in one’s head, and what emerges on screen or page–the limitations of fallible mortality, our limitations as artists (Pound’s “I am not a demigod/I cannot make it cohere…”) then I would say this is embedded in the attempt to make real art.

John Clute

A writer who does not suffer career despair, for some or all of the reasons adduced here, is a hobbyist or one of the one %, perhaps earned. Writers who do not suffer vastation in the face of the world probably do not write sf, or fantastika in general. These are truisms, which is no reason not to recognize them.

I sometimes think every new day is a personal best because I’ve never lived so long before.

Jeffrey Ford

An interesting dichotomy here. There are those describing what they have personally experienced. And those describing what everyone must experience.

Karen Burnham

I’m currently facing a slightly different sort of despair: after an 18 year career in Aerospace and Defense, I find myself involuntarily unemployed for the first time. No real shame–the project I was working on got canceled and I got laid off. Happens to the best of us. But I went from the peak of my career, with a BS in Physics and an MS in Electrical Engineering, being a lead engineer on a manned space vehicle and a subject matter expert, to–having to prove myself in job interviews. “You’re not technical enough for us.” Or “You’re too technical in the wrong area.” Or, worst of all, simply no interview at all, “We’ve decided to proceed with other candidates at this time.”

So a) I wanted to let you know that it isn’t only the creative disciplines that suffer from this sort of despair, even us stolid STEM field workers face it as well. And b) I wanted to recommend a mindfulness meditation podcast that’s been a big help for me as I work through the anxiety and depression that come with this period of unemployment. The Mindfulness Awareness Research Center at UCLA puts out a podcast with a couple years of backlog, and it’s been a huge help to me. Available from iTunes or their website (http://marc.ucla.edu/body.cfm?id=22) each episode is about 30 minutes of (free) guided meditation.

Cecelia Holland

I’m very sorry. But keep pedaling and don’t look down. If I’ve learned anything in all these years, it’s if you don’t give up, you get what you want.

Peter Straub

Despair does seem to me, as several others here have intimated, an inescapable part of the so-called process of writing , especially the writing of fiction. Time and productivity allow one to accommodate this bleakness and confusion of purpose through sheer familiarity and the hard-earned recognition that after all one has been there, exactly there in fact, and managed to come through–it is probably true, most of the time anyhow, that this psychic destruction and healing is a necessary aspect of the ability to inhabit and develop something that feels previously unseen and unknown.

It has always felt to me that writing a novel is a lot like designing and building a house that you live in during the entire process of doing the work. There is a profound comfort in this, because, hey, you are at least building a house, a sort of big snail shell over your head, but there always comes this dreadful moment when you realize you have forgotten to include the bathrooms, or the windows, and nothing fits smoothly together. It’s ruined, and so are you. Ruination feels total. You will never escape this terrible condition. Then, whilst you lay tormented on your crummy uneven floor, something occurs to you, some fresh development that amounts to a rescue. You were lost, and now you have been found, maybe. The possibility of work brings you back into hope and purpose.

After all this , actual completion comes as a dreadful moment, all the worse for being shot through with ironic, mocking threads and bolts of satisfaction, gratification, pride. That’s just lovely, but the engaging, occupying shell is gone, and you no longer have a house, you must build a new one and do the whole damn thing all over again. And besides that, it gets harder, not easier, over time. Having written is the real, the worst despair. It’s ashes. That’s my story, anyhow.

Jack Skillingstead

I do know writers who claim to not suffer despair or anything like it, at least in regards their work. But I think they are the exception rather than the rule. If they aren’t lying outright, that is. It must be something about writing, or the writing life, that attracts a personality prone to depression. I would also like to add that writing has rescued me from despair as often as it has precipitated same. In typical mood swing dynamic, you have to be down before you can be up again–and you so desperately want the ups.

Ken Liu

I have been most intrigued by the fact that participation in this roundtable seems far higher than in the past. Perhaps despair actually makes the words flow for writers!

Marie Brennan

“I do know writers who claim to not suffer despair or anything like it, at least in regards their work. But I think they are the exception rather than the rule. If they aren’t lying outright, that is.”
I have to admit, this kind of comment actually kind of bugs me. I used the word “despair” in my own response because that’s the topic we’ve been handed, but it isn’t the word I use in my regular life. Disappointment, sure. Frustration. Sometimes anger. But despair? Nah, not really–except in very localized instances. (There’s a short story I’m contemplating giving up on trying to sell, because nobody seems to want it. That does not, however, make me question my ability to write at all.)

Sure, there are *many* writers who suffer from depression, either chronically or periodically. Sometimes, though, I feel like we romanticize the ~suffering~ of our art, to the point where it starts to sound like if you aren’t suffering that way, you’re doing it wrong. Or, as Jack suggested, lying. I don’t think you really meant that seriously, Jack–at least, I hope you didn’t–but after a while you start to think that maybe this isn’t a rhetoric we really want to reinforce.

Jack Skillingstead

Marie, it wasn’t meant in all seriousness–the lying remark. Probably there are plenty of writers who couldn’t relate to this discussion. Also, I understand your point about romanticizing despair. I think there does come a point when a person clings to the feelings even as they begin to lift. It’s an odd phenomenon and worth examining. Personally, I never wanted to feel bad or depressed or any of that. I wanted writing to be fun and energizing. And it is, sometimes.

Karen Haber

I think that writing is all about pain management. And there are so many flavors. Revulsion at the first draft. Dismay in the face of revisions. Terror at the prospect of reviews and/or resounding silence in response to your opus once it’s published. Perhaps we’re all simply mad to do this in the first place. But consider the alternative…

John Clute

As I writer with no knack at the exploration of the relict knot gardens within my psyche, and hence few works of “creative” writing to show for all the years, I do find myself less interested in others’ Minotaurs within than in whether or not what they say, in 2014, helps me echolocate where we are now. I have written, after my fashion,– and have been close to writers–for more than half a century, which I increasingly think is anecdotal; I do increasingly think of the roller-coaster within as a personalized toolkit. I do like descriptions of the tooling (as in the Cowboy Boot), all the same.

John Clute

I suddenly wanted to drive to shop to get milk (lest civilization fall) for the Author I live with, and pushed SEND prematurely (a guy thing). Final sentence to my previous was going to be something along the lines of a stating of admiration for Peter Straub’s architectural use of the inner drama: as what he describes, in the end, is the things built. Which, as a critic, is what I feed on.

Guy Gavriel Kay

I was also thinking about Peter’s metaphor late last night. Enjoyed it greatly, in part because of some awareness of the Eternal Variance here: he builds a house, I journey with fitful light along a forest path, hoping ardently for enough clarity. As a result, when the journey is done I don’t feel the end-of-book desolation he experiences. I feel relief. Joy. Sense of a harbor reached. And, an overwhelmingly short while after these, an awareness that at least four more full pass-throughs are to come because it ‘just isn’t good enough’. It is never good enough, but it can be made better. And then one lights another lantern and starts on a different path…

I also agree with the comment that “despair” as a term was a bit of a trap here. It was the essay question term, as it were, had to be used or addressed, I suggested earlier that frustration, a sense of limitations, might apply more to some. There is, indeed, a risk of romanticizing the writing game.

Paul Graham Raven

I had the good fortune to talk to Mike Harrison shortly after I’d read Climbers, and enthusiastically explained to him (complete with much arm-windmilling and fanboyism) how it was abundantly clear that, for him, the thinking out and following of a route up and across outcrops of rock, every one different, and different again under different climatic conditions, was surely a metaphor for the writer’s struggle to reach a half-seen goal across a hazardous landscape of ideas and feelings oriented entirely orthogonal to the gravity of one’s surrounding culture.

He was quiet for maybe ten seconds, and then told me he’d never thought of it like that before. I’ve always considered this an important lesson, even though I’m not entirely sure what I learned.

James Patrick Kelly

I have hesitated to join this conversation while I interrogated my own feelings about the vicissitudes of being a writer and I have at last decided that Guy has it about right. Despair, it seems to me is too powerful a word, even though it ~was~ in the assignment. I hesitate to play the dictionary card, but here it is nonetheless: despair: noun: 1. loss of hope; hopelessness. 2. someone or something that causes hopelessness 3. to lose, give up, or be without hope. Perhaps I am of too sunny a disposition, but despite the many disappointments that have come my way (in myself as a man, in my dedication to the work, in the inadequacy of my abilities, in the reaction to my fiction, in the path of my career) I have never, ever given up hope. Thats why I’m still at it, lo these forty (!) years. Sure, I get
very sad and mightily pissed off, but as others have pointed out, the cure is to go back to the keyboard and show ‘em. And myself.

Jeffrey Ford

Just thinking about what the parents of those 100 plus murdered children in Pakistan might be feeling today. If there was ever an example of real despair. Equating that to not being able to finish a story or book and or not having something published is pretty ridiculous. Disappointment, maybe, frustration, sure, but despair–how melodramatic. If that’s the term you go to first to describe these kind of issues, I think you’re setting the bar for despair incredibly low.

Jeffrey Ford

Having the time and wherewithal in your life to even write stories no one else will ever read is a blessing compared to what a lot of people have to go through. Cheer up.

Guy Gavriel Kay

Well, this one gave me pause, underscoring how tricky this issue is.

Measured against the parents of murdered children, or refugees in Syria, or those living amidst Ebola while the world pretty much ignores, none of us have a “right” to be depressed, let alone despairing, period. Our sorrows are, as Coleridge and then Miriam Toews (quoting him in a book title) put it, “puny.”

It could even be called “ridiculous.” But do we really want to take that position?

Much as I dislike (I said so earlier) the hypersensitive, tormented genius, romanticized pain, “my candle burns at both ends, our morality is not as others” is, image of artists, I am loathe to invalidate someone’s actual feeling or state of mind. If someone suffers from depression, for example, it isn’t so startling to imagine a major trigger being a sense of working badly, of failing.

I agree that despair as the word used might have been (with respect) a bit forced, but on the other hand it engendered a more lively discussion here than there has been for a while.

Cecelia Holland

For me, despair is the right word. But I agree, a much more interesting discussion than the last couple.

Jeffrey Ford

“Much as I dislike (I said so earlier) the hypersensitive, tormented genius, romanticized pain, ‘my candle burns at both ends, our morality is not as others’ is, image of artists, I am loathe to invalidate someone’s actual feeling or state of mind. If someone suffers from depression, for example, it isn’t so startling to imagine a major trigger being a sense of working badly, of failing.”

A good perspective and really well put.

Guy Gavriel Kay

I know, and Peter said as much too (about a different stage in the process).

I meant “forced” as in framing the discussion to make something normative to writing stress when it might be person-specific (and with different contexts for emerging).

I am, for example, comfortable with using “despair’”to refer to the feeling engendered by impossibility of being good enough. I mean that pretty narrowly. Pound’s:

“And I am not a demigod, I cannot make it cohere.”

Paul Witcover

I have to respond to this one. Despair is a subjective quality. It’s not measured necessarily by external circumstances. It’s absurd to state that the despair which, say, drives a writer to kill herself, or to produce a great work of art, for that matter, is less than or incommensurate with any other despair. Simply put: it’s not anyone’s business or right to pronounce another person’s despair ridiculous or melodramatic. Perhaps, to some, it is. Fine. But don’t presume to speak for what others are feeling–including, I might add, the parents of murdered children, who might very well be experiencing something other than despair at this moment.

Jeffrey Ford

I wasn’t presuming to think what those parents were feeling, that’s why I used the word “might.” It was an indication of my trying to weigh in my mind the limits of the term despair. Hey, don’t presume to tell me I can’t weigh the term despair in any manner I might like, melodramatic or ridiculous or justified. It’s a subjective thing.

Jeffrey Ford

Besides, being a parent myself, wondering what it might be like to have to endure the kind of tragedy these parents have, I don’t see that as a crime against humanity.

Peter Straub

With respect, I don’t think this is quite what we were talking about. To speak personally, I do understand that I am in an extremely privileged position, and that whatever I possess of decency prohibits me from ever whining about my lot in life. That whining would be abhorrent. I was talking about a writer in relation to the work the writer does, not world-historical catastrophes. False arguments will get us nowhere. (Of course, we are hardly going anywhere specific in the first place.)

Peter Straub

Hey, this really is a Cheery Holiday Roundtable!

Gary K. Wolfe

I hadn’t planned to join this discussion since I am supposed to be marking papers this very moment, but it’s getting way more interesting than that. Jeff’s point reminds me of something that comes up every time I teach Holocaust literature to classes that are largely African American: someone will always bring up the issue of American slavery. I had a chance to talk to Elie Wiesel about this once, and it turned out he’d had the same thing happen quite often. His response, simply, is “don’t compare suffering.” Suffering is not a competition, and neither is despair. Another, maybe more problematical comment on the issue came from Jerzy Kosinski, whatever you may think of his own credibility and general weirdness. In an interview somewhere on living in Poland during the Holocaust, he argued pretty much exactly what Jeff is saying. The example, as I recall, was that of a girl in South Dakota who discovers a big zit on her nose hours before her senior prom, and how we don’t really have the right to trivialize or demean her feeling of desperation–or despair–as it applies to her life, sheltered as it may be, at that particular moment. She’ll learn soon enough what other kinds of despair can be.

Gary K. Wolfe

But Peter’s right; that’s not entirely what this started out as. For me, I think that architectural metaphor is about the most useful thing to come out of this discussion so far, and it works for designing and teaching a class as well. I should get back to hammering together my outhouse.

John Clute

As per Gary (I think): the writerly “despair” of most interest to me as a reader is that which enables the writer to learn about “what other kinds of despair can be,” which is the next thing to learning how to write about the world.
ust say, also, with thanks, that I certainly haven’t yet gotten any NPD whiff out of this discussion.

E. Lily Yu

The thing about despair is, it doesn’t allow for a reasoned perspective on the matter. If you have perspective, you don’t have despair.

Peter Straub

Good point, Lily.

Jeffrey Ford

Excellent point.

Paul Witcover

Unless it’s perspective that is bringing despair. In an existential as opposed to psychological sense, for example. Despair is not depression. It can be reasonable. (To be honest, I feel the same about depression, but that’s off topic.) You would lose a lot of great writing if you took away a writer’s sense of despair, it seems to me. If you look at your own work and see clearly that it falls short of your intentions, despite your best efforts, then that perspective can reasonably lead to a feeling of despair… and that despair to whatever permutation of “fail better” drives you, as per previous posts by Peter and Guy.

Fabio Fernandes

Interesting points, both from Lily and from Paul. Indeed, despair is not depression, but depression definitely often leads to despair. I’m finding this discussion one of the liveliest of the past few months (maybe of the whole year), because it seems to be almost an universal constant for writers. We can discuss the etymology of despair for weeks, but there is always one moment when we stare at it in the face–or we’re so close to it that we have to resort to pharmacology to keep it at bay (my case, for instance–yes, I’m relating despair to depression). Recently I read the new preface that Richard Kadrey wrote to Metrophage, where he writes that (I’m citing from memory) he can
only write these days by taking antidepressants. I can relate. Although I can write without taking meds, I feel despair approaching by any number of reasons: that I’m not good enough at what I’m doing, that I’m too old for this shit, that I will never get published by a big press, or that, even if that happens, the reviews will show to everyone what a fraud I am. Curiosly enough, I never despaired of facing a blank page and getting out of ideas. I’m constantly haunted by the thought that I have no good ideas at all, and nobody will ever like them enough. Somedays it’s almost too much. Meds and meditation help. Running too.

Guy Gavriel Kay

Not entirely sure. Therapy or analysis, say, work to offer insight or perspective, but that doesn’t necessarily alleviate suffering.

I suspect many feeling despair might often feel worse when their intelligent perspective on a wider, suffering world tells them “I actually have it pretty good.” And that applies to writers in the context of writing, too. One can know all the “reasoned” things, and still be in that state.

Russell Letson

One is reminded of pigs, Socrates, and satisfaction. Pigs write very little, and Socrates–well, we know how that turned out.

Lacrimae rerum, vale of tears, the black dog, and all that. Dying is easy; comedy is hard. Also writing. Also getting up in the morning and going to a dead-end job. A lot of heroism is, to steal from Woody Allen, just showing up.

Jeffrey Ford

So we have all these writers on this round table, who, as far as I can tell are still writing and publishing, and yet a lot say they have experienced despair, some on an ongoing basis, which by definition is the complete loss or absence of hope and yet they still write. If you experience the absence of hope in specifically your writing, how do you continue to write? I would think a complete absence of hope would put the kaibosh on writing. How does this work? God forbid, I’m not denying anyone’s depression or personal tribulations or tragedies, but I think it would be useful to know how one carries on devoid of hope.

Cecelia Holland

Because the only thing worse than writing is not writing.

Fabio Fernandes

I second that.

Jeffrey Ford

So you’ve got writing over not writing which seems to indicate at least a modicum of hope. For as troubling as Fabio’s account was, he never claims despair, although he says he can feel it approaching. He takes measures to stave it off, running, etc. He continues to write–there’s hope.

Karen Joy Fowler

There is a quote I like from Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye: “Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life-sized.” I think of this often with respect to problems and sorrows, that they are life-sized to the person who has them. Every adult eventually has problems that are genuinely life-sized. They are not simply a matter of perspective; they are real and your reaction to them–depression, despair–is only rational. You think that you will never again sweat the small stuff; you see so clearly what matters and what doesn’t. But it turns out to be a temporary clarity and eventually you lose your footing again, find yourself outraged or undone by trivialities in spite of yourself.

As near as I can remember, I got through the period of not being able to publish, by not expecting to ever publish. Still, every rejection was a disappointment when it arrived and each one sent me into a tailspin, but I always recovered; I was always eventually ready to try again. The difficulties I face as part of the process of writing feel like a different thing entirely. They are internal; they are between me and me, no one else involved. In some ways, the problem solving is the part I enjoy the most. It is always disappointing not to be a better writer than I am, but I would never characterize it as despair. There is always the next book in which to be great. I wouldn’t even want to do it if it weren’t hard to do. I like that part.

What happens to the work once I submit it is beyond my control and surviving it is part of my job. I can’t be a writer if I can’t survive it. I handle it by taking pride in my ability to survive it. Look how many people are trying to stop me, I tell myself. They don’t know who they are dealing with. I will not be stopped.

Paul Witcover

Like x 1000.

Jeffrey Ford

Karen: Lovely and for me a true description of the frustrations, vagaries, and determination attended to writing. And most definitely not despair.

Elizabeth Hand

Beautifully put, Karen.

Kathleen Goonan

Perhaps the writers who lost hope–or lost opportunity, through life’s vicissitudes and choices–are not here, and perhaps they are the ones who, at the last, did feel despair–or perhaps they felt the milder sister emotion, hopelessness (oft-paired, though–perhaps twins?)–or the absurdity of trying to continue in the face of too much failure. Those here are lucky, perhaps (or, oft-times, it might seem, unlucky, for having pursued a path that seems to end in a cul-de-sac), but most likely obstinate; persistent in a way that often borders on the vast Land of Wishful Thinking.

Everyone’s writing life is different because there is nothing that automatically occurs after a certain amount of work: no promotion, no tenure; no grievance procedure to write up and take to the Big Boss and get satisfaction.

Having had hope does not preclude despair at a future date. At, for instance, not being able to feed one’s children because of the vicissitudes of the writing career.

Andy Duncan

I despair of having anything new to add to this thread!

Guy Gavriel Kay

What a cavalier, casual, careless use of the word!

You are going to hurt everyone’s feelings!

Ahem.

Jeffrey Ford

Much better to toss the term around like jelly beans, especially in honor of those who might actually be experiencing it.

Peter Straub

I think the loss of hope is experienced as absolute, but gradually is seen to have been temporary. After a couple of decades, it has a sort of familiarity. You say, yep, nothing works any more, I really did it this time, it’s up the spout and down the drain for you, old pal, and after too much time, a couple of days, weeks, or months, something begins to wake up, a picture of a kind begins to form, and it seems possible once again to do work, to finish the book. This is not mere depression, I took an antidepressant for years while all this was going on, on top of which I saw my shrink faithfully multiple times a week, and still I had these Dark Nights. Eventually I came to understand that for me anyhow a period of real despair was simply part of the process, so I had to suck it up and keep moving. It may be true that I am simply a fragile sort of human being, but that is far from being the only factor at work. I also have an unbelievable strength. I am old enough–and been through shrinkiosity–to be able to see this, to see both sides of this, with real clarity.

Cecelia Holland

Me too.

]]>4Alvaro Zinos-Amarohttp://www.locusmag.com/Roundtable/?p=22472014-12-12T09:47:36Z2014-12-12T09:47:36ZBeing close to the end of the year, it occurs to me it might be interesting to talk about some of the books we’re most looking forward to in 2015, and why. I will mention three to get the ball rolling. Daryl Gregory’s Harrison Squared (March 24, 2015). I love Daryl’s writing, and this Lovecraftian teen story promises to be dark, comical and poignant all in one. Kit Reed’s Where (May 12, 2015). Don’t know much about it, but consistently find her work intriguing and worth checking out. Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson (May 19, 2015)–Stan returns to pure space exploration. (And I love the cover).

Ellen Datlow

Afraid I can’t participate in this one. Too busy reading for 2014!

Alvaro Zinos-Amaro

That’s a great reason, Ellen! Maybe you can mention a few of the projects *you* have in the pipeline for 2015, which will surely be on some of *our* lists of books to look forward to? :-)

Ellen Datlow

Okay. A quickie (I’m learning a new computer and email system today, which is taking wayyy too much time).

To be totally self-serving, my antho for Tor called The Doll Collection will be out March 10th–and it will hopefully satiate anyone who loves/hates/is afraid of dolls. With illos by Ellen Klages, Rick Bowes, and my doll collections :-)

Cecelia Holland

I have a book coming out next year also, Dragon Heart, from Tor. If Ellen can do it, I can.

Alvaro Zinos-Amaro

You certainly can, Cecelia–thanks for sharing. Any 2015 releases you’re looking forward to as a reader?

Jack Skillingstead

I always look forward to Daryl’s work. I read Harrison Squared in manuscript last year, and, yes, it’s very good.

I definitely agree with looking forward to Daryl Gregory’s Harrison Squared–I always love Gregory’s stuff, and the related novella, We Are All Completely Fine, which came out from Tachyon in 2014, was excellent.

Filed under “guilty pleasures” are the new Atrocity Archives book from Charles Stross (The Annihilation Score) and the (presumably) final book in the Tao trilogy from Wesley Chu, The Rebirths of Tao.

It’s always interesting to see what new door-stopper anthology will come out from Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, so while I haven’t had the chance to dive into their Time Travelers anthology yet, I’m looking forward to Sisters of the Revolution: A Feminist Speculative Fiction Anthology. Whenever I’m reading as a scholar, volumes like this are invaluable.

I’d be looking forward to Robert Charles Wilson’s The Affinities more, except that his most recent book, Burning Paradise, didn’t grab me. But on the basis of all the books of his that I’ve loved, I’ll give this one a try as well.

Karen Lord’s The Galaxy Game will be likely be intriguing, a follow on to her previous The Best of All Possible Worlds.

And I’m really interested in the upcoming anthologies: Rose Lemberg’s An Alphabet of Embers, Nisi Shawl and Bill Campbell’s Stories for Chip, Seanan McGuire’s Queers Destroy Science Fiction, Matthew David
Goodwin’s Latino/a Rising, and Sam Wilson’s The Near Now (with a personal interest in this last one, cause I have a story innit–but there are stories by Lauren Beukes, JY Yang, Charlie Human and Sarah Lotz that I’m dying to read, so).

Russell Letson

As a reviewer, it would be tactless of me to indicate which books I look forward to–and by implication, which books I might not be so excited about. Of course, anybody can look at the forthcoming-books pages of Locus and at my reviews over the last few years and make some educated guesses, but I’ll leave that parlor game to–well, I can’t imagine who would find it amusing. I’m sure I’ll find a couple dozen titles that will at the very least engage my attention. (I’m reading one right now, but you’ll have to wait for the review to see which one it might be.)

Paul Graham Raven

I’ve never been much of one for thinking far ahead about books, to be honest–which is more a reflection of my general inability to plan than anything else, perhaps. (I was always terribly laggard about even my favorite bands, back in the days when the number of new album releases was still something one could reasonably be expected to keep up with.) And the demands of a PhD aren’t exactly freeing up extra braincycles, either–so I’ll politely excuse myself from this thread, while noting that reading it is clueing me in to a few titles I’ll try to remember to look out for in the year ahead. :)

Cecelia Holland

Yes, I think this round is going to be for the critics, not the writers.

Paul Graham Raven

Heh–I assumed that more people would think of me as the former than the latter, despite (or is it because of?) my unbalanced attempts to keep a foot in both camps. :)

Fabio Fernandes

I’m more of a writer (and editor) than critic. :)

Karen Burnham

Apropos of what Russell said (although I don’t share his take on reviewers avoiding mention of favorites) I should say that probably what I’m most looking forward to next year is the thing I’ve never heard of that I’ll end up loving. In 2013 that was the anthology Glitter & Mayhem–I would never have picked it up based on its cover copy description, but when I was assigned to review it (for Locus, I think) it totally hit my sweet spot. The array of authors and the way they tackled the subject matter turned out to be my favorite of the year. I don’t think any 2014 releases hit me quite that way, but I haven’t been reviewing much this year, either. So I’m looking forward to the things I don’t know about yet in 2015!

Stefan Dziemianowicz

I’m of the same frame of mind. As a critic who reviews horror fiction, had you asked me last year at this time what books I was looking forward to, I would have mentioned Stephen King’s Revival mostly out of a sense of obligation. It’s always interesting to see what new tricks the genre’s bestselling author has got up his sleeve. But it wasn’t until this year, when I actually read Revival and was totally blown away by it, that I realized how long it had been since I had reacted so strongly to one of King’s novels. For 2015, I’m looking forward to books by authors whom I’m not familiar with that make an impact, and books by authors whose work I do know that exceed expectations. That’s about as vague and indefinite as you can get, but it’s what keeps me reading as a reviewer.

Peter Straub

This is a funny thread. The writers say they won’t, and the critics say they can’t.

Cecelia Holland

It’s all in the life of the mind, Peter.

Ellen Datlow

The editors also can’t (at least this one can’t) :-)

Andy Duncan

Karen beat me to it, but I was going to say Link’s collection, absolutely. Heard her read from it at World Fantasy. Terrific, of course.

Peter Straub

Karen and Andy, I’m with you on this one. Kelly’s new book, for sure.

Ellen Datlow

Even I will say YES, although I’ve read all the stories, I think :-)

Siobhan Carroll

I echo the enthusiasm for Kelly Link’s new collection. Andy, don’t you also have a collection coming out? Or is it just wishful thinking on my part?

I’ll be on the lookout for Okorafor’s The Book of Phoenix, Karen Lord’s Galaxy Game, Elizabeth Bear’s Karen Memory, and others. I’ll add that I caught Randy Henderson’s highly entertaining reading of his forthcoming Finn Fancy Necromancy at the World Fantasy Convention, so I’ll be keeping an eye out for that.

Andy Duncan

Siobhan, yes, thanks, but it might not be 2015.

Elizabeth Hand

I’m late to the party, sorry! My answer echoes Russell’s–I review so much stuff that I feel that I can’t play favorites. I will say that there are MANY titles already mentioned here that I’m really looking forward to!

But if no one has yet mentioned Reif Larsen’s I Am Radar, allow me to do so. I did not read his previous novel, The Selected Works of T. S. Pivet, but recall being attracted by its different vibe. With galley of the new one in hand, my interest in this author is further stoked. Looks totally Pynchonesque!

Marie Brennan

I’m afraid I’m way too out of the loop as to what’s coming out in the next year. (I have to stop and remind myself which of *my* books is coming out next year–the perils of a timeline where you’re working on #4 when the general public has only read up through #2.)

Siobhan Carroll

I loved the new Fitz & Fool book, so I’m looking forward to Robin Hobb’s Fool’s Quest, and I hear great things about Jo Walton’s The Just City… honestly though, I’m most looking forward to discovering titles and authors I don’t yet know are out there.

Stefan Dziemianowicz

Okay–let me chip in a few titles from the horror side. I’m looking forward to Joe Hill’s fourth novel, The Fireman, an excerpt from which I heard him read some months back at at New York’s KGB Bar Fantastic Fiction reading series (and which, at the time, he alluded would NOT be out until later than 2015). It’s a 1,000-page post-apocalyptic thriller that–say, wait a minute… wasn’t there some other guy a few decades back whose fourth novel was also a 1,000-page post-apocalyptic thriller? Hmmm….

I eagerly anticipate Ellen Datlow’s anthology The Doll Collection, because any original anthology that Ellen edits invariably yields a handful (or more) of stories that wind up in the various year’s-best compilations. (Plus, who among us doesn’t have some creepy childhood memories–or fantasies–of dolls?)

Melanie Tem has the novel Yellow Wood coming out, and Steve Tem a stand-alone novella In The Lovecraft Museum. Both of the Tems write stories whose supernaturalism seems perfectly in synch with the rhythms of everyday life. They’re writing a sort of fiction for the twenty-first century that Shirley Jackson was lauded for in the 1950s and ’60s.

And–what the hey–I’m interested in Clive Barker’s The Scarlet Gospels, because it revisits themes and moments from his Books of Blood era.

Fabio Fernandes

Alvaro, if I may add one more title: Victor Milan’s The Dinosaur Lords. Knights and dinosaurs: what’s not to love?

]]>0Alvaro Zinos-Amarohttp://www.locusmag.com/Roundtable/?p=22342014-11-24T19:32:15Z2014-11-24T19:32:15ZWhile the print and online versions of this magazine do an excellent job of monitoring and reviewing new SF/F/H texts, and non-fiction books closely tied to SF/F/H, it occurs to me that at times there might be other “associational” books that are worth bringing to the attention of readers. This is one of those items.

First, a book related to Christopher Nolan’s latest movie, Interstellar (2014), reviewed here by Gary Westfahl. I’ll say right upfront that I haven’t seen the film yet, but in this instance I don’t think it makes much of a difference. As someone with an interest in science, I was delighted to learn that renowned physicist Kip Thorne acted as consultant (and executive producer) on the project. Better yet, as I recently discovered, he has written a beautifully-illustrated popular science book on the subject: The Science of Interstellar. From what I’ve read so far, I can heartily recommend it. (The only reason I haven’t read all of it is that it contains spoilers, so those sections will have to wait until after I’ve checked out the flick). Ursula K. Le Guin recently used the phrase “realists of a larger reality” to talk about writers of the fantastic, and I think that phrase also applies to scientists who conceive of far-out possibilities. That’s what Thorne has done, and his book nicely bridges cutting-edge theories with thoughtful extrapolation. In this video Nolan and Thorne talk about their collaboration; and in this piece, Matt Williams describes how the film-making process may have led Thorne to make a discovery.

Continuing this thread of interest in science, there are two other recent films that chronicle pivotal moments and key contributions of two great minds, one deceased, one still alive. Both of these films are largely based on fascinating non-fiction books.

One is Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges, which is the inspiration for The Imitation Game. The other is Travelling to Infinity by Jane Hawking, which is the primary source material for the movie about Stephen Hawking, The Theory of Everything. These are movie tie-in editions of older books, and the texts have been updated with new material, so I recommend the newer editions. For anyone who is curious about cryptography, computation, algorithms, the nature of time, the Big Bang, and black holes, these are good gateway texts that provide the very human contexts of these ideas.

]]>2Alvaro Zinos-Amarohttp://www.locusmag.com/Roundtable/?p=22222014-11-06T20:49:28Z2014-11-06T20:49:28ZIn late October various fine publications (including this one) reported that a previously unpublished essay by Isaac Asimov had appeared in the MIT Technology Review. In a prefatory note to the essay, Arthur Obermayer describes how he was the one who suggested, back in 1959, that Asimov be approached to join a group of “out of the box” thinkers on an ARPA-related project. Asimov participated briefly, and wrote the piece, “On Creativity”, as his single contribution. Obermayer notes that “his essay was never published or used beyond our small group.”

Interestingly, however, the core ideas in Asimov’s recently published piece did, in fact, see print, back in 1960, in a similar essay to the one just published. I’m referring to Asimov’s essay ”Those Crazy Ideas”, which was published in the January 1960 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and included in his collection of essays Fact and Fancy (1962, Doubleday). [This collection which was republished as a paperback by Discus in March 1972 and is easy to find secondhand.]

Here are two of the similarities between the pieces, strongly suggesting that “On Creativity” was the precursor of “Those Crazy Ideas”:

Asimov develops the same example of Darwin and Wallace arriving at the theory of evolution by natural selection independently in both essays. This includes the reference to Malthus. He provides a lot more detail in the F&SF version, which is considerably longer.

In both essays, when discussing groups dedicated to generating new ideas, Asimov intuits/guesses that five participants is the maximum desired number. In the MIT piece, Asimov refers to these think tanks as “cerebration sessions”; in the more informal F&SF piece, he calls the practice “brain-busting.”

If that isn’t enough to illustrate the connection, consider that in the introduction to “Those Crazy Ideas” Asimov describes how a “consultant firm in Boston, engaged in a sophisticated space-age project for the government, got in touch with me,” and asked him “where do you get those crazy ideas?”.

Based on all this, I think it’s safe to say that “On Creativity” is an earlier version of what would become “Those Crazy Ideas”, with a different intended audience. It’s clear from the tone and treatment that “Those Crazy Ideas” is meant for a lay reader while “On Creativity” isn’t (it includes explicit references like “your company”). It’s also clear that “Those Crazy Ideas” is more fully fleshed-out, thoughtful and systematic about the problem of creativity.

For readers who don’t have easy access to the F&SF essay, I’ll leave you with the summary of what Asimov considers the five key criteria needed for creativity:

“A creative person must be

1) broadly educated

2) intelligent

3) intuitive

4) courageous

5) lucky.”

(“Those Crazy Ideas”, 1960)

The details behind these five points are developed at length in “Those Crazy Ideas”–I recommend it.

]]>0Alvaro Zinos-Amarohttp://www.locusmag.com/Roundtable/?p=22102014-10-17T14:13:42Z2014-10-17T14:13:42ZAn aspiring writer recently asked if there was any value in doing short fiction, as a way to break into SF/F publishing. Versus merely penning novels and pitching them at the editors in New York.

Once upon a time, doing short fiction was the established path. From the 1920s through the early 1980s, almost everyone who was anyone came up through the magazines first: short stories, novelettes, novellas, and serialized novels. Go back and look at the covers of old issues of Analog magazine (formerly Astounding) and one will see the names of some of today’s top sellers. Including people who aren’t commonly known for having cut their teeth in a “Hard SF” market like Analog, such as George R.R. Martin. Other authors who figured prominently in pages of Analog (prior to going “big” in novel publishing) include Frank Herbert, Piers Anthony, Anne McCaffrey, Joe Haldeman, Greg Benford, Vernor Vinge, Orson Scott Card, and many others.

These days, the statistics tell us that it’s easier to break in with a novel than with a piece of short fiction. Starting in the 1990s, new writers began to have a lot of success going directly to books, as opposed to short stuff. There are far more “slots” for new novels, from year to year, than new short works. For every first short piece appearing in an issue of Asimov’s or on Tor.com there are dozens of first novels hitting the market. So what is the advantage to “going traditional” when the odds clearly favor the novelist, whether indie or paper pub?

I know for me, I wouldn’t have a career without my short works.

A little history: I came of age reading the short fiction of Larry Niven, and fell in love with how Larry was able to tell “big” stories in relatively confined spaces, and because Larry had come up through the magazines (in the 1960s and 1970s) I determined (in the 1990s) that this was the way I wanted to come up too. Granted, the process of learning my craft proved to be much more protracted and challenging than I thought it would be. Enjoying well-told short SF/F is very different from being able to actually write good SF/F short work. I’d been a novel reader (mostly) as a teen, and my unconscious novel sensibilities made re-tooling for short works a much bigger project than I thought it would be.

It paid off, though, in 2009, when I finally got the call from the Writers of the Future contest: one of my novelettes had won me a spot in the 26th volume. Within 60 days I also got a nice note from Stanley Schmidt at Analog magazine, telling me he was taking another novelette of mine; a piece called “Outbound”, which eventually won me my first Analog AnLab readers’ choice award. Now, both of these triumphs (and they were triumphs, believe you me, after the better part of two decades of rejection letters!) presaged a quick rise in the ranks. My proverbial “iceberg” was surfacing from the depths, after many years of honing craft and learning by doing—and failing. Which inevitably got me on the radar of editors like Toni Weisskopf, who is the chief editor and publisher of Baen Books.

Now, it was unknown to me at the time that Toni has a particular enjoyment of “Hard SF” stories; those SF/F tales that try to stick close to what we actually know about physics, chemistry, math, cosmology, etc. Or at least rigorously extrapolate from same and/or work hard to be self-consistent about technology and science. But when I started having other publishing success at Analog, the premier “Hard SF” magazine in the English language, and also the most-circulated print SF magazine in the West, this was a green flag for Toni that I was a guy to watch out for. Had she received a first novel from me without any bona fides (e.g: no track record in Analog) I am not sure I’d have gotten the close attention I got because I had bona fides. So in a sense, selling a first novel to Baen (for me) would not have been possible without prior sales to Analog first. That some of those Analog stories (“Ray of Light”, “Outbound”, “The Chaplain’s Legacy”) would land on Nebula and Hugo ballots, or win readers’ choice awards, was merely icing on the cake. A marker (for any editor to see) that this new Brad R. Torgersen guy was turning heads in the readership.

So yes, to answer the question posed originally, I think short fiction can be a very valuable tool for any aspiring writer seeking to enter the field. Provided (s)he enjoys the form. Not everyone likes short stories, novelettes, or novellas. In fact it’s a safe bet that the vast majority of people reading this article probably prefer novels to short works. And may only occasionally read a short piece if they pick up one of Gardner Dozois’s annual Best Of books, or the similar volumes done by other editors. This is not 1960, and the population of actual SF/F readers in 2014 come to the genre mainly through long form; not short. Which means they will be thinking and feeling “long” when they sit down to begin writing their stories. Which means re-tooling for “short” is a whole other ballgame.

Still, it can be done. And in my case, all my best PR and success has relied upon my traction in the short fiction world. Even my first novel (Baen Books: The Chaplain’s War, fresh out on October 7, 2014) relies on two linked short fiction pieces which previously occupied space in Analog: “The Chaplain’s Assistant”, which made the top 5 in the reader poll for short stories in its year, and “The Chaplain’s Legacy”, which made the 2014 Hugo ballot, and won Best Novella for the AnLab, publishing year 2013. These short works are the backbone of the book. And while the book does tell a bigger, broader story, it could not exist without the “vertebra” of the short works being there first.

Something else: most of my short work to date has been compiled into two collections, Lights in the Deep, and Racers of the Night. I’d initially thought (in 2009) that one should wait until one has a long-lived career, before embarking upon any “best of” albums. But in the run-up to the publication of The Chaplain’s War I had a lot of readers ask me if I had any other books for sale. It occurred to me that there was a lot of economic sense in compiling my short pieces into a book-length treasur(ies.) Kevin J. Anderson agreed, and brought me into the fold at WordFire Press, a consortium publishing enterprise which was able to rapidly and professionally put my collections onto the market well before any traditional small press could. Both Lights in the Deep and Racers of the Night have done well for me, and served as “appetizer trays” for readers wanting to get a taste of my work, prior to investing in something like a novel. These collections also help put the stories into the hands of awards voters who can’t otherwise get their hands on copies of back-dated issues of Analog.

So there’s no reason why a short work, having sold and been published once, can’t be re-sold and re-published again and again; to include overseas sales and translations, which merely introduce overseas audiences to you in a brief format. Paving the way, as it were, for those overseas audiences to expect your longer stuff when it eventually comes.

I think short work also serves as a reinforcement for good craft. As has been said by Steven Barnes and many others, learning to tell a “big” story in a small space forces you to learn an economy of prose that might not otherwise manifest, if your first instinct is to type up a thousand-page epic. True, many readers like and enjoy thousand-page epics. But the heightening of tension, suspense, and the preservation of reader enthusiasm, can all be aided by learning to work at short length. Even if you may have to then turn around and develop a different “tool box” for going long again. Habits developed at short length can do wonders for a person extending to long again.

If nothing else, short works can also serve as good “rest stops” for both writer and reader alike. If you’re in the thick of your novel and your brain simply needs a productive break—something new upon which to dwell—a short story or novelette can be just the thing to take your mind off the novel. So that you come back to the novel fresh, with renewed energy. Assuming the short piece sells and is published, this then keeps your name and work in front of readers during the publication troughs between books. In other words, fans eager to see more from you won’t have to wait a full year (or more) to get their hands and eyes on something they enjoy. Which just further increases their anticipation for your book(s) when it/they eventually see print.

So, short fiction: worth it? Damned right! And I would add: good luck!

About the Author:

Hugo and Nebula award nominee Brad R. Torgersen has won the Writers of the Future award, and two Analog magazine “AnLab” Readers’ Choice awards. A native of Utah, Brad and his wife lived for fourteen years in Washington State, before returning to the Wasatch Front late in the last decade. A healthcare tech geek by day and Army Reserve Chief Warrant Officer on weekends, Brad’s first novel (from Baen Books) The Chaplain’s War hit store shelves in October 2014.